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As Giro Nears End, Thoughts Turn to Contador

ANAGNI, Italy — Here and there along the Giro d’Italia route over the last three weeks, fans encouraged Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner, to race harder.

On Stage 3 of this 21-stage race, one poster said in Italian, “Lance Armstrong’s collarbone may have broken, but his will to win will never be.”

On Stage 16, a sign in English attached to a king-size American flag said: “Go Lance. Broken bones can’t stop our hero. You can do it!”

After coming back from a three-and-a-half-year retirement, then breaking his right collarbone in March, Armstrong is no longer the hands-down favorite to win big races like the Giro, which ends Sunday with a time trial in Rome.

With one stage to go, Denis Menchov, a Russian on the Rabobank team, is in the pink leader’s jersey with a 20-second lead over Danilo Di Luca of Italy. Armstrong, who started the race as a support rider for his teammate Levi Leipheimer, is 12th, 15 minutes 4 seconds out of first place. Philippe Gilbert of Belgium won the 20th stage on Saturday.

Armstrong, 37, had made it a goal to win this Giro before he crashed and was injured two months ago. Since then, as it turns out, he has transformed into something previously unthinkable. The man once unbeatable is now an underdog.

“He was gone for a long time, and a lot has changed since then,” said Jens Voigt, who is one day older than Armstrong and has referred to himself and Armstrong as “old diesel engines” because it takes them a while to warm up. “You cannot say that he will be the favorite at the Tour, for sure, but maybe one of the favorites. There are other riders who also can win, on his own team even. Of course, there is Alberto Contador.”

Contador, the 2007 Tour de France champion, won the Giro last year but chose not to defend the title. He is considered the best all-around rider, a tough climber who has improved his time-trial skills. Last year, Contador also won the Vuelta a España and he might have won the Tour, too, but his Astana team was left off the starting list after being implicated in a doping scandal under previous management.

Photo

Lance Armstrong, center, with teammates during the 20th Stage of the Giro dItalia. Denis Menchov remained in the lead.Credit
Maurizio Brambatti/European Pressphoto Agency

At 26, Contador, a slightly built Spaniard, is at the top of the sport — and enjoying the Giro from the comforts of his home right now.

While big-name riders like Armstrong, the 2008 Tour winner Carlos Sastre and the two-time Vuelta champion Menchov, have been competing on this grueling Giro course — tackling mountains in the Dolomites and even the volcano Mount Vesuvius — Contador has been saving his energy for the Tour.

“I personally think riders like Menchov, Sastre and Lance came to the Giro because, psychologically, they don’t believe they can beat Contador at the Tour,” said Matt White, a race director for the Garmin-Slipstream team and Armstrong’s former teammate on the United States Postal Service team. “They’d rather get a big win here. It’s very hard to be in full flight here and then back it up in July at the Tour. Only a few riders have ever done it.”

To ready himself for the Tour, cycling’s most prestigious race, Contador rode several races earlier in the season and will ride in the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré in June. He was leading Paris-Nice before crumbling one stage from the finish, needing to be helped off his bike. He said he had forgotten to eat and replenish his energy before the stage.

Armstrong, a brash Texan, wrote on Twitter that Contador “has a lot to learn,” but they later said they had defused any controversy. Before the two raced together for the first time with Astana, at the Castillo y León event in Spain in March, Armstrong struck a conciliatory note.

“I think right now it has to be him, naturally,” Armstrong said of Contador, according to The Associated Press. “There’s no way I can come back after four years and reclaim leadership or reclaim some type of ownership. I have to respect the current results, and he’s the best right now. And until that changes, he’s the leader.”

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Though he started slowly, like an old diesel engine, Armstrong has showed flashes of the talent that made him one of the greatest riders ever. He led the peloton in several tough climbs, pushing through the wind while the others rode more easily behind him.

During Stage 17, Armstrong mounted an attack on Italy’s Franco Pellizotti, who had made a solo breakaway. Pedaling up the climbs with a look that could burn a hole through concrete, Armstrong appeared as strong as ever, but he faded as he approached the finish line on a mountaintop in a national park.

Later, Armstrong — who has not spoken to reporters in two weeks — said on Twitter that he had started his chase too early. He added that his condition was improving, considering that he drank beer for four years, crashed in March and was “an old dog.” Some of his rivals, however, were clearly impressed.

Photo

Alberto Contador.Credit
Maurizio Brambatti/European Pressphoto Agency

“You can see that he is getting stronger and stronger with every day, no?” Menchov said of Armstrong, although he considers Contador his biggest competition at the Tour. “There’s a reason why he won the Tour seven times. You are starting to see some of that returning.”

Michael Barry, a Canadian on Team Columbia-Highroad, said Astana could potentially go into the Tour with two leaders.

“It will be interesting to see how that whole thing unfolds,” he said. “Lance is getting better all the time. But Contador? He doesn’t race a lot, but when he races, he races to win.”

The feeling that Armstrong and Contador are coming for Astana’s top spot is not universal.

Australia’s Cadel Evans, the runner-up at the 2008 Tour, told The Sydney Morning Herald this month that he considered Contador, not Armstrong, his competition at the Tour. Evans is not racing in the Giro.

“It doesn’t change a great deal,” Evans said of Armstrong’s return to the sport. “It is always Contador who is the man to beat. He has been so much better. His time trialing has been incredible. He has such a strong team.”

The debate over whether Armstrong or Contador will be the leader at the Tour is just what Johan Bruyneel, Astana’s team manager, had hoped. Bruyneel said the Armstrong-Contador combination would make their team more dangerous in July.

“Everybody is asking me: ‘How are you going to do this? How will you choose a team leader?’ ” he said. “But why do I have to even do that? At the start of the race, and maybe even as the race is going on, we will know who is stronger. That will become obvious.”

Bruyneel added: “So we will keep our options open because that keeps the team sharp during a race. It also has a lot of advantages because it will keep other teams guessing.”

So with several weeks between the Giro and the Tour, the guessing game continues. Will Armstrong or Contador lead Astana during the biggest, most prestigious race in cycling?

“I have a great idea,” White said as he joked with Neil Stephens, Caisse d’Epargne’s race director, at the start of Stage 18. “They should flip a coin to decide it.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SP5 of the New York edition with the headline: As Giro Nears Its End, Contador Watch Starts. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe